Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

Parents today likely won’t be surprised to know their children have far less freedom to travel in their neighbourhoods than they did. But what they might not know is how that could affect their children’s physical activity and mental health. Most children and adolescents worldwide are not active enough to obtain optimal benefits for health and development. Among the many factors associated with physical activity, children’s independent mobility (CIM), which is their freedom to roam and explore their neighbourhood without adult supervision, is gaining increasing attention. CIM has declined over the past 50 years in many countries at the same time as mental health problems such as anxiety, depression and suicide among children and adolescents increased. In his previous research, the speaker found that children with greater CIM are more active. More recently, he explored how CIM related to parent-perceived child distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. When CIM was assessed as how far children could travel without